Phil Harrison, former main man at Sony Computer Entertainment, was hired as the president of Infogrames to transform the company and shape the direction of Atari. The future of Atari is taking a new path, perhaps into a more casual “social gaming” online style future.

In a Q&A session with Mr. Harrison, he talks about Alone in the Dark being, perhaps, one of their last huge-budget video game efforts. Although Alone in the Dark is an Infogrames title, the parent company of Atari, it does mold the direction of Atari.

Although their are plenty of titles in the pipeline for Harrison’s company, Atari will adjust its business model to meet the demands of the industry. Moving towards a community concept and packaged more into an online business (downloadable games perhaps?) and less like the shrink wrapped boxed games we’re all used to buying from Atari.

The industry transition is going “online” and Harrison says, “If we are part of that transition, perhaps we are going to take a slightly aggressive, leading-edge role in that transition.” This may be a bright future for the Atari branding which has never shined as bright as they once did in 1982, just before the video game crash of ’83.

Although Harrison never directly states “casual games” he mentions shying away from big budget video games and focusing more on social aspects to online gaming. This means an online presents with a community aspect which doesn’t cost a large amount of cash which cancels any chance of an MMO, a move that would surely seal Atari’s fate along with its parent company Infogrames.

Looking at other industry movements, like Instant Action, from GarageGames, its clear there is an effort to move towards flash based gaming with complete network interaction and community focus. As bandwidth increases, online activities rise and gamers continue to look for cheaper alternatives for entertainment we’ll see sites like this continue to expand.

A site like Instant Action isn’t exactly a standard “game portal” which aggregates titles from many developers, but focuses on their own proprietary games and markets them as their own. We’ve seen Valve’s Steam thrive in an online presence with hit titles and partnerships with folks like PopCap (Peggle) for highly cherished downloadable content for a reasonable price.

Boxing and shrink wrapping a game costs money, marketing materials, manuals and competition leads to excessively high costs for game titles. A company like Atari, who has struggled financially, can benefit from a less-costly game development cycle much like any Indy company can.

What do they really have to lose

GTA IV has many of the big aspects of a popular casual game of its time, mini-games (bowling, pool, darts, etc), it can be played in ten or twenty minute sessions if you desire and contains a good deal of laid back content which can be worked at your own pace.

GTA IV is best described as TheSims meets the Russian Mafia. You’ll find you can spend a good amount of time going on virtual dates to play darts, grab a burger or hanging out with your friend at a strip club or playing pool. When not driving around town on missions you’ll be simulating life to the fullest experience possible, including sitting on the couch and channel surfing, watching infomecials, cartoons or perhaps hitting the cafe to use the Internet.

Does this sound like an action packed shooter? Not entirely, no.

The fact is, there is something in GTA IV for every gamer of mature age. Granted, it doesn’t have the content-building capabilities of a Second Life for 18+ but it does simulate life in many aspects in both a hardcore and casual manner. I’m leaning more towards casual than hardcore in most aspects with a mature content wrapper.

If you replaced the adult situations in GTA IV, such as spending money at the strip club, shaking down a payment from a restaurant owner or the “occasional” need to shoot at a police officer, you’d have a great life simulator for all ages. Although some folks at rockstar might be afraid of casual games, they sure do use the recipe for success in GTA IV!

The game does have ground breaking graphics, physics all wrapped in a real world environment with creative missions and intense action. However, it also simulates life so well with side quests that mix RPG aspects with casual gaming aspects that it’s no wonder why the title received a perfect 10 score.

GTA IV will have no problem posting numbers which will save their end of quarter results, for sure, but what is with the harsh attack on casual gaming? Is it fear?

The gaming market is definitely big enough for two industries of gaming concepts: casual and ground breaking movie-like entertainment. Will casual games impact the sales figures for large multi-million dollar game development projects? Doubtful.

Believe it or not, casual games have existed for may years, they just never received as much exposure. Than along comes some big companies like PopCap games, Nintendo and publishers like MumboJumbo, BigFishGames and Reflexive who are putting some marketing dollars into their games and are grabbing some attention.

Nintendo has obviously shown that casual gaming is a huge market with limitless growing potential but many electronic game downloads are sharing the wealth as well. Rockstar shouldn’t fear a growing casual game market because history has shown that casual games have evolved over time to something a bit more “hardcore.”

Casual gaming is a “gateway drug” to longer more “ground breaking” technologies like Grand Theft Auto, Gears of War, Oblivion, Bioshock and others. Some gamers may evolve into strategy players, others into RPG players and some for first-person-shooters while a bulk of them stay with their casual gaming roots.

Many of these game developers got their start with Missile Command, Donkey Kong, Pitfall and Centipede yet today their playing games that rival a box office movie title in popularity, revenue and cost. If an individual was inspired by Elevator Action or Pitfall and became a block buster game developer, who is to say a Diner Dash player can’t follow the same path?

It’s true that much of the casual gaming industry is female but women can become developers, marketers, publishers and launch their own studios too.

To those developers and publishers afraid of the casual game market I say, stop whining and dropping “F” bombs upon us, look at us as a “farm team” for future growth in your own industry.

(Thanks, NextGen)

The pattern is simple, every two years Nintendo releases some slight design changes for their current hand-held system while every four years we see some new generation redesign arrive. Although Nintendo will not confirm a new redesign, it’s obvious to many that a design must be in R&D by now–what will it look like?

I’m sure many would love to see a product with the sexiness of an Ipod Touch: thin, scratch resistant and a bright clear screen. Unfortunately, the DS is marketed towards the entire family, would a thin product hold up against a five year old?

It’s almost assumed the screen will be bigger than the last generation and some folks believe the GBA port will be removed from the next design. If you compare the DS to the DS Lite you’ll notice the GBA port has become less of a feature and more of a novelty. The DS allowed a GBA game to be inserted and completely hidden from view while the smaller DS Lite doesn’t hold a GBA game so well, allowing it to stick out in an ugly fashion from the bottom of the unit.

If the design gets smaller still, with a larger screen, the chances of GBA support will be slim considering the thickness and relative “bulkiness” of the GBA game carts. Perhaps the games will be smaller than the DS game carts as well, which are already way too easy to lose (my daughter has managed to mis-place roughly five games somewhere around the house). Do we really need to hang onto the Game Boy Advanced games anyway?

My predictions or wishes in the next DS redesign:

• Smaller Form Factor: Perhaps 25% size reduction of the DS size and half the thickness
• Larger Dual Screen: Both screens with touch sensitivity, expanding interactive features
• Auto-dimming Screens: Going to the DS ‘setup’ screen to dim the screen is annoying
• High Speed Wireless N: Staying up-to-date with wireless protocol speeds to keep system current for the next four years.
• Longer Battery Life: New lower power chips should help reduce the overall power consumption. Nintendo is good at power reducing their hand-held devices to keep it competitive on a consumer level.
• Faster Processor: Providing a hand-held mimicking the Game Cube in power would be impressive and highly desirable.
• DS Compatibility: Playing ‘last generation’ DS games–very important to maintain consumer acceptance.

The most important feature is to be compatible with the current generation DS, which is why I predict only a 25% size reduction and half the thickness. This is a sacrifice worth taking because the DS audience is huge, they won’t buy a new system if they can’t play their back catalog of last generation games.

Shrinking the size of the games may or may not be a good idea. Perhaps keeping the same form factor for the game carts is desired by Nintendo and simply updating the density to something higher for more detailed “Game Cube” quality games. The main drive behind keeping the same form factor is the children… reducing the size again could make the product a swallowing hazard for young children increasing danger and potential lawsuits.

What are your ideas on a next generation DS redesign? What would they call it?

About Caption: Take a look at Nintendo’s old “Game & Watch” hand-helds…what hand-held device does it look like in todays market?

We recently purchased a 13″ Mac Book for our daughter (and son, although he’s only two years-old) and it has been a great experience thus far. Her favorite site, right now, is Disney Playhouse and MyNoggin.com which she can navigate on her own with the touch-pad and play the games she wants whenever she wants.

Once she was able to play games she started to expand her abilities, using the iSight camera on the Mac Book to take photos of herself and her brother with Photo Booth and has begun using the text pad to practice her letters and spelling words. The casual games were a gateway to expand her curiosity into other non-gaming applications. Having her own little laptop allows her to play entertaining games, many of which are learning games, build her computer skills using the touch-pad and interfaces in the operating system and builds her respect for computers. She’s learned how to put the computer to sleep and how to keep it safe so it does not get damaged.

All at the age of four!

How do we keep her protected on the Internet? Mac OS X’s Leopard release has great child protection tools which allow me to setup a “simple finder” and only gives her access to text pad, photo booth, FireFox and a few other tools. It restricts her website access to sites we’ve configured so as to not get “in trouble” on websites with mature content. The biggest concern is properly validating the “kids website” has content correct for her age by browsing it first and exploring the content manually to see if it fits her age and understanding.

The child protection services on OS X allow me to remotely configure applications and update accessible websites from my Mac Book Pro. If I find a new website that may interest her I can remotely add it to the un-blocked list of sites so she can navigate to it immediately.

I was very surprised to see her use the text editor to practice spelling her name and her friends names. She pretends to “do work” as I write casual game reviews by typing words or random letters (which she calls “her work”.) She’s already pretending to blog! If I’m reviewing a casual game she will mimic my actions and play her online web games or take photos of herself jumping around and making funny faces.

A four year-old child has the skills required to handle a computer and play online games. Don’t expect them to type in the URL’s themselves, they’ll need some help spelling and typing but you’ve given them the door to technology and have shown them how to open that door to a whole new world; this is a world which is expanding and growing everyday and there is no reason to wait–give them the basic skills they’ll be using in life now.

Casual gaming has no age restrictions if you’re a responsible parent looking to give your child the tools and guidelines to the wide world of gaming. Don’t be surprised if they ask questions or want to expand their learning beyond video games into other applications. Children are curious little creatures and they’ll be learning skills while they think their playing. How did you learn to use a computer?

Why must we look at the two types of gaming habits as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or ‘light’ and ‘dark’ or ‘easy’ and ‘hard.’ A great example of this is the title World of Warcraft because it’s a very casual game played in a hardcore manner.

What?

WoW is a great example of a casual game gone incredibly wrong. You start out with a very lightweight RPG type game where the entire goal is to run around and gather things or kill things. It doesn’t require a great deal of skill and many ‘hardcore’ gamers believe the line between casual and hardcore is drawn when skill becomes a factor.

They obviously haven’t played Peggle on grand master. We often times want to distinguish a hardcore player from a softcore casualite based on the games they play-not how they play the games.

A casual gamer can play bouts of Halo 2 on and off for months and never become “hardcore” enough to enter a tournament or even play online. It isn’t because a casual gamer lacks skill, they may just lack time or have too many games to occupy a limited amount of time.

Yet, if one writes a story about Halo 2 on a ‘casual gaming site’ many folks would raise a brow asking ‘why?’ because we’re obviously not into that type of game. Obviously? Or, perhaps we just don’t have the drive to log 80+ hours a week playing it.

The reason World of Warcraft differs is because it bridges the gap between hardcore and casual. Both persona will find themselves sucked into the MMO like it was a crack addiction. Yet, without chemical dependency what pitts the two gamers in the same game? It’s the black magic of the WoW addiction I think.

In my opinion, a hardcore gamer can spend just as much time in front of Peggle, Venice, Bejeweled or any other “casual title” and get the same amount of fun out of it. I think some hardcore gamers just don’t give it a chance because they think its to “sissy” or changes their reputation amongst their peers.

On the flip side, a casual gamer may not purchase a game like Saints Row, Gears of War, G.R.A.W or any other type of game of those caliber because they just don’t “commit enough time” or are “too hard.”

Saints Row is a game that requires practice but no more practice than scoring huge in a game of Puzzle Quest or Magnetica! It’s all about perception and what you think you’ll think of a title you’ve never played or demo’d. The same way you’ll tell your parents “I don’t like swordfish” without ever having tried the dish. “Just taste it,” they’ll say or “your taste buds change over time, try it again,” they urge.

Is gaming any different? Perhaps, years ago, you didn’t care for Thief, DOOM or Rise of the Triad, but you really don’t know how you’ll take to G.R.A.W or Rainbow Six unless you give it a try again. Your taste buds change over time.

The same can be said to supposed ‘hardcore’ gamers that don’t believe in playing a “casual game” because they didn’t care for Tetris back in the mid-1980′s.

You don’t have to be a Jedi Knight or a Sith to pick a great game. You just have to have an open mind and try new things.

Some people in the industry, such as Daniel Bernstein CEO of Cake Mania, feel the try and buy way of doing this is working, but needs to be tweaked to get a higher conversion rate. Personally, I think the casual games industry needs to stick with some form of the try and buy because there are many games that are similar out there and not all incarnations of a certain games are good games. The try and buy gives you a good understanding of what the game is like before having to buy it for $20 USD.

Other people in the industry feel the try and buy model is not popular with some players. RealArcade, a popular portal site for casual games says that the population on their web site is about 50:50 split between men and women, but the people that actually purchase the games is split 3:1 in favor of middle aged women.

Still other people in the industry hold a different view and think game portals are the way to go with paid subscriptions to play. EA’s game portal, Pogo.com, has 1.5 million paying subscribers and half of those people play daily.

Of course, there is the camp that thinks the money is in advertising within casual games. There are some developers that disagree with this. The advertising seems to help the game portals, but are harder for the developers to get the ads into the games. Not to mention, the developers do not see a good portion of the ad revenue. Google is trying to come to the rescue here with their Adsense for Games. Google will make it easy for developers to put ads in their games and hopes to entice sponsors to sign up to advertise in games. Google made it work with web sites. If anyone could make it work with casual games, Google is a good prospect.

The casual games industry is still fairly new in the aspect of profit. There are a lot of big players all trying to find out how to get your money. We will have to wait and see what actually ends up working.

Thanks

Said Hudson Entertainment president and CEO John Greiner, “PlayFirst is a leader in the casual games space and shares Hudson’s goal of delivering top quality entertainment to a broad audience of players. Top casual games such as Diner Dash that have a wide appeal are driving a new era in console gaming. PlayFirst’s portfolio combines the best in casual games with lovable characters, immersive storylines and incredibly fun gameplay – making them well suited for the fast-growing and increasingly mass market audience of digital download service users.”

This is interesting news. I will be curious to see how these games are implemented on the consoles. Many of the casual games involve a lot of mouse use. Consoles don’t have mice. I am sure they will adapt the controls to the controllers, but there is room for error there. Hopefully the control scheme doesn’t affect the game play.

Thanks Gamasutra

A study conducted by Ipsos found that a third of US gamers prefer playing casual games. They, also, ranked casual games, such as board games and card games, as their favorite types of games. The more traditional hard core games, such as action games and first person shooters, ranked third and fifth on the list.

The study opened up eyes of some in game advertisers. Eyeblaster, a company focused on casual game advertising, just partnered with Real Networks to stream video advertisements in downloadable games.

“Within this segment, in the US market alone, we estimate that in 2006 there were more than 700 million downloads of casual games,” said Mr. Cohen. “The try-and-buy model, where the game is offered for a one-hour trial, is translating to something equivalent to 800 centuries of entertainment time in front of the user. What I’m saying by that is that the inventory available in this segment is incredible. I don’t think there’s a limitation on the inventory side. The limitation will be more on the growth of the video advertising side.”

Thanks EMarketer

The person serving the orders is SpongBob. It is a much simpler concept than most simulation games. SpongeBob seats, serves and cleans up after the customers. The money you earn goes to buy upgrades for the Krusty Krab. You do not get to choose which upgrades you get. You just earn enough money and then you are able to afford the next upgrade that the game decides you need.

I thought the game was entertaining. I happen to like SpongeBob so I was entertained by the game. If you are into service style games, then check out SpongeBob Diner Dash.